David Oreck was born in 1923 in Duluth, Minnesota. Around the age of 18, he decided to go to the University of Minnesota, however the Lend-Lease Program [Annotator's Note: An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States; H.R. 1776] to Britain was started. Oreck then left the university and enlisted in a civilian pilot training program. Upon completion, he was to fly aircraft to Britain. Before he could so, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] then declared war on the United States, so Oreck enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces. His interest in flying began with his first flight in a Ford Trimotor [Annotator's Note: the Ford Trimotors had 15 military, and 24 civilian variants] outfitted with skis on Lake Superior and he remained interested all of his life. He has not stopped flying into his 90s. He has flown with many friends, including Chuck Yeager.

David Oreck trained as a civilian pilot for the Lend-Lease Program [Annotator's Note: An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States; H.R. 1776]. He trained in Dickinson, North Dakota in the early stages of the program and learned to fly Aeroncas [Annotator's Note: Aeronca L3 Grasshopper/Defender]. A considerable number of aircraft in the Lend-Lease Program never made it to Europe and he thinks part of that is due to the speed of the pilot training. Oreck was aware of the state of the world before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He feels the Depression may have built character in our citizens due to the serious nature of unemployment which was made worse by the Dust Bowl conditions in the Midwest. When Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin D. Roosevelt] came to power in the 1930s, he created the WPA [Annotator's Note: Works Progress Administration], the CCC [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps], and more, which were intended to put people to work. Most of the national park buildings were built through the CCC. Oreck says that when politicians fail, the public holds them responsible. The only thing leaders can do is go to war so they can blame the problems on somebody else. He feels that this is our current situation and he hopes he is wrong to think so. Concerned about the cyclical nature of human conflict, he thinks the Museum's [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum] work is important. Education can prepare people for what the future holds.

David Oreck was not part of the CCC [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps] program as he was too young, but he knows he would have taken part in that. During the Great Depression, the stores in his hometown were boarded up. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] and the Japanese were making strides in their wars and Mussolini [Annotator's Note: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini] had joined them. It was really tough to make a living and not be worried about the state of the world. Oreck had two younger brothers and his family got along during the Depression even though every day was a struggle. He did not know what to worry about. Many prominent Americans like Charles Lindbergh, Jack Kennedy's father [Annotator's Note: future President John F. Kennedy's father was Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.], Father Coughlin [Annotator's Note: Monsignor Charles Edward Coughlin], and more urged the United States to not get involved. Oreck feels it was almost miraculous that Churchill [Annotator's Note: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill] was able to convince Roosevelt to get involved. Oreck gives the credit for saving the world to Churchill. After Dunkirk [Annotator's Note: the Battle of Dunkirk, 26 May to 4 June 1940], even Hitler promised to leave Churchill alone, but Churchill insisted he would fight the Germans and made his famous "We will fight" [Annotator's Note: We Shall Fight on the Beaches speech; Churchill to Parliament of the United Kingdom, 4 June 1940] speech even though being woefully unprepared to do so. If Hitler had prevailed, Oreck feels the United States would not have been able to invade Europe successfully. He also feels that many things could have gone terribly wrong and changed the outcome. For example, Oreck says the Japanese had not surrendered in battle in 2,000 years and their Generals wanted to fight to the end. Truman [Annotator's Note: President Harry S. Truman] was convinced to drop the atomic bomb on Japan by being told we would lose a million men in an invasion. The General who presented the war plan to not surrender after the bomb was dropped and was opposed by the Emperor of Japan, committed suicide rather than disobeying or telling his troops to surrender. In another twist, the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) that had delivered the atomic bombs to Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, was sunk just after leaving. Had it been sunk before it arrived, there would have been no atomic bomb drop. The captain of the Indianapolis was court-martialed due to not zig-zagging [Annotator's Note: an anti-submarine naval maneuver], even though the Japanese submarine commander later testified that it would not have mattered because they still would have sunk it. 1,000 men were lost to sharks because no one went to their rescue.

David Oreck was in Minneapolis, Minnesota when he heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He and many others had never heard of Pearl Harbor before that day. It was a complete shock. In thinking of it now, there are so many things that happened that could have materially changed the outcome. He wonders if the American public would have stood still for losing a million men in an invasion of the Japanese mainland. He talks about intuition and intuitive thinking. As an example, he describes the weather being so terrible in France, that Rommel [Annotator’s Note: German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel] went home to celebrate his wife’s birthday. Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: Supreme Allied Commander, US Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower] decided to invade and prevailed. Despite prevailing, that decision cost many soldiers their lives. Many Higgins boats [Annotator's Note: landing craft vehicle, personnel or LCVP] dropped them in deep water due to the weather at Normandy and avoiding the crossfire of the German guns. The soldiers drowned. He feels that so many things that we had no control over helped decide the outcome of the war.

David Oreck enlisted in the US Army Air Forces in 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He wanted to fly in the Air Force since he was already a pilot. He chose to be a navigator instead of a pilot because that would get him in to the action sooner rather than later. He served on the B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] that had the first use of radar used for both navigation and bombing. He flew his missions from Saipan, Northern Marianas. He and his crew trained in the United States. He cannot remember all of where he went to train. He does remember flying B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] out of Boca Raton, Florida. He liked it because they would fly all day and have libations in the evening. The crew would use the oxygen masks to sober up at the beginning of the next day's training. He also trained out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He remembers flying a B-29 in the Grand Canyon in Arizona just for the fun of it. He remembers life on Saipan as being very rugged. The local civilian Japanese population committed suicide before the American arrival because they had been told the American soldiers would be cruel to them. A lot of Japanese soldiers who had not surrendered remained holed up in the mountains for quite a while. The American personnel would walk from their tents to the showers and there were numerous occasions where the Japanese soldiers killed them there. A cousin of Oreck's in the Marine Corps was in the north of the island and Oreck would ride a motorcycle to have dinner there. He had commandeered an Indian motorcycle [Annotator's Note: Indian Motorcycle Manufacturing Company]. The sidecar had been removed and he would tow it behind a Jeep to start it and then let it run all day because he did not have the strength to kickstart it.

[Annotator's Note: David Oreck served in the US Army Air Forces as a navigator on a Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber in the 883rd Bombardment Squadron, 500th Bombardment Group, 20th Air Force stationed at Saipan, Northern Marianas.] Flying Missions from Saipan took about 15 hours round trip. The chances of surviving being in the water were very slim, in a raft or not, although he says that he never really thought about that. While Oreck does not specifically remember his first combat mission, he says that a normal mission depended on where they were going. Their Toyama, Japan mission had the distinction of having the greatest amount destruction of any target in the war. He met someone after the war who had been an American prisoner of war north of Toyama. This man told Oreck that the Japanese camp commander had been given instructions to kill all Americans once the troops landed in any invasion. Oreck and his crew did not know the prison camp was there. Missions over Tokyo, Japan cost more than 1,000 lives per attack. Oreck feels the atomic bomb drops saved many, many thousands of lives. He feels that the loss of lives is regrettable but also that wars are won by those who kill the most effectively. Curtis LeMay [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces, then US Air Force, General Curtis LeMay] was in charge of the Japanese raids and knew that very well. He gave explicit instructions to improve their accuracy by flying lower. The crew emotions were mixed because of the danger of that. Most of the low-level missions were at night. As a navigator in the nose of the plane, Oreck steered to the target using radar. The Japanese would use searchlights and kamikazes to attack them. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Oreck for more specific impressions, but he avoids doing so]. Once the United States took Iwo Jima, the return route provided a halfway landing point before going back to Saipan. He discusses the difficulty of taking Iwo Jima due to the Japanese tunnels. As on Saipan, there were Japanese there that had not surrendered and who would attack them. Although many aircraft used Iwo to land after being damaged, Oreck's plane never did. They only stopped for debriefings and breakfast before heading back to Saipan.

David Oreck guesses he was on between five and ten missions as a navigator on a B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. He only remembers one aircraft in particular. [Annotator's Note: Oreck picks up a picture but does not show it to the camera and points out himself in it. He then points out famous Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz’s father, Arnold Spitz, who is also in the picture.] Long after the war had ended, Oreck received a call from a California man who wanted to know more about his father who was on Oreck's B-29 crew. Oreck recalled that after the atomic bomb drop on Nagasaki the Japanese surrendered quickly. He thinks that if the United States had had to invade Japan from Okinawa it would have been terrible. He recalls that he drank Scotch and he had asked his father if he would get him a case of it before he left to go overseas. Scotch was hard to come by and he does not know how his father did it. About the time the Scotch arrived, the aircrews were told they could no longer take extra items with them. Oreck decided to throw away his survival equipment and take the Scotch instead. When he arrived at Saipan, he was the only one who had any. Because of his cache of Scotch, he was allowed to join a doctor's Bridge playing group despite being a lousy Bridge player. He came down with typhoid fever and does not think he would have survived if that same doctor hadn't gotten him into the hospital ahead of other people who were ill.

After the war and separation from the US Army Air Forces, David Oreck did not return to college and decided to go New York to see his girlfriend. They married in 1946 and ultimately had three children. Most of the men his age went to school on the G.I. Bill after the war. He feels that a lot of the job competition he would have had in business was at school, so he had it pretty easy. Mentored by General David Sarnoff [Annotator’s Note: US Army Brigadier General David Sarnoff], the founder of RCA [Annotator's Note: Radio Corporation of America], he received an education that he could have never gotten otherwise. As a business leader, he has lectured at a number of universities that he feels he wouldn't have been accepted to as a student. In 1963, at 40 years old, he left RCA and founded his vacuum cleaner company. He had been in charge of the RCA wholesale distributorship and Whirlpool Corporation in New York City and ultimately ran the company. He was involved in the introduction of both black and white, and color television. He feels many people thought he was crazy to leave RCA, but he feels that often one's bad luck is their good luck. Elisha Gray was the President of Whirlpool who was a chief supplier to Sears Roebuck, Company. The president of Sears was on the board of directors of Whirlpool. Gray approached Oreck to sell vacuum cleaners. They did so well that the Sears president felt they were a threat and told Whirlpool to fire them. This ended up in the Supreme Court. At that point, Oreck designed his own vacuum cleaner and had them manufactured in Hanover, Germany. The Deutsche Mark got very strong, raising his costs to produce them there. He moved them to the United States and sold his company at 80 years old. He had earlier moved to New Orleans, Louisiana while still with RCA and took them from last place in national sales to first place. He feels that what The National WWII Museum is doing with educating master teachers on the war is one of the best things they can do. Oreck is hopeful that the master teacher program will not only build a great quantity of knowledgeable high school teachers, but will help the Museum remain relevant to people who are past the generation of the world war veterans for the next 35 to 40 years. He feels that the city of New Orleans benefits as well since people come to the Museum as a destination and then see New Orleans. He is grateful for Mueller [Annotator's Note: Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller, PhD; Founding President and CEO of The National WWII Museum] who has done a superb job and he is proud to be a little helpful in any respect. [Annotator's Note: Oreck gets very emotional.] He thinks about the heroes that died and says that he did his job and they did theirs and we should be eternally grateful for the United States. [Annotator's Note: Oreck motions for the inetrviewer to turn off the camera.]